Half 'n Half
by Hamtaro23
Summary: Karen Page, young, aspiring journalist at the New York Bulletin, moonlights as a private investigator. When Matt Murdock sends an amnesiac John Doe her way, Karen just can't resist the challenge. Semi-AU.
1. Chapter 1

Not entirely sure where this came from but, well, here it is...

* * *

Karen Page prides herself on being a decent private investigator, emphasis on decent because, well, there's always that darned Jessica Jones. But being decent in a city like New York is good enough for Karen Page who, as she says to herself some mornings while applying makeup in the bathroom mirror, has never been a girl who wanted too much.

Except for coffee. There is no such thing as too much coffee. And journalism. Because Karen Page knows herself to be a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist.

She graduated at the top of her class at Columbia with a double major in journalism and sociology with a minor is East Asian studies. After four years of intellectual rigor on the upper west side, Karen bounced into the midtown offices of the New York Chronicle, offices replete with spectacular floor-to-ceiling views of the city and marble-tiled bathrooms, with the kind of naiveté and enthusiasm only newborn babes could have. She was going to write her way to equality and justice one article at a time. That is until she was let go one year into her internship. Apparently, tackling political corruption and law enforcement scandal just wasn't the Chronicle's "style."

That was just fine by Karen Page: her memoirs would need these ups and downs anyway. She packed her bags and headed west to Hell's Kitchen to the New York Daily Bulletin whose offices are replete with hardly any views of anything and linoleum-tiled bathrooms, with slightly less naiveté but just as much enthusiasm. In a city full of people who all think they are going to go places someday, Karen Page refused not to be one of them.

Working as a P.I. on the side didn't happen as serendipitously to Karen as she likes to think that it did. After all, every starving New Yorker needs to be moonlighting as something and she just as easily could have been a bartender or waitress. But, hey, she made good money digging up dirt on other people and Karen Page definitely needed the money.

* * *

"Page Investigations, what can I do for ya?" Karen's entire P.I. outfit consists of one nondescript cellphone and a supposedly military-grade laptop that could survive a drop from at least three stories up. Just as the shrill female voice on the other end of the line starts spewing venom about her cheating husband, Karen's office phone rings.

"Ma'am, I-I understand just how frustrated you must be but please could just give me one second," she hits pause on the cellphone call and picks up her office phone from its cradle.

"Karen" She recognizes the voice instantly: Matt Murdock. _Fuck_ , she mentally groans, _should have checked caller ID before she picked up. Sloppy, Karen, sloppy._

"Matt! It is great to hear from you. How are you doing?" Her voice is dripping with feigned sweetness, "It's been a while since we last talked." Actually, it has been exactly two years and thirty seven days. She remembers because she ended their mildly infuriating and convoluted relationship on her birthday as a gift to herself. He, the genius Columbia law student, proved to be too…straight-laced, conventional, annoyingly pedantic about religion for sophomore Karen.

"I've been great, Karen. I, uh, actually read one of your articles in the Bulletin recently. I'm glad you're doing really well." There is a brief pause and some rustling of papers from Matt's end of the line. "I was wondering if you'd like to get coffee sometime this week."

 _Coffee? Matt Murdock? This week?_

When she doesn't respond immediately to request, Matt is quick to add: "Strictly business. I've, we've, I mean Nelson & Murdock is representing a client who might benefit from your," there is a slight pause, "expertise."

"You want me to do a piece on one of your clients?" She's heard of Nelson & Murdock, a small – what do they call it – _boutique_ law firm helmed by two of Hell's Kitchen's finest defense attorneys, one of which just happens to be her college ex.

"Ah, we're actually in need of your _other_ expertise."

Karen now understands fully, "Jessica Jones not within Nelson & Murdock's price range?"

Matt stammers helplessly on the other end of the line, much to Karen's amusement. "No, no, uh, of course not. Foggy and I thought it'd be good to catch up with an old friend. For old time's sake."

"Sure. Whatever you say, Matt. Tomorrow. 3pm. 43rd and 11th." She practically slams the receiver back into its cradle before he has any chance to protest. _Goddamn Matt Murdock._

With a long exasperated sigh, she unpauses the call on her cellphone and surrenders one ear to yet another shrieking, scorned, and she hopes, rich wife. "Now, you said your husband is cheating on you?"


	2. Chapter 2

The corner of 45th Street and 10th Avenue is unremarkable as far as New York City intersections go. The diner Karen picked is flanked on all sides by Wilson Fisk storage warehouses, Wilson Fisk condominiums, and aging tenements soon to be many more Wilson Fisk condominiums. She sips her coffee and scans an email with proposed headlines for next week's Lifestyle section: "Tangerine is the new black?" "Fifty shades of kumquat?" _Kumquat?_

Matt Murdock stumbles into the booth behind his walking stick a couple minutes past three o'clock. From the looks of it, he has not changed much since his law school days. Same boyish grin across his lips, same wine-dark glasses hiding his listless eyes. Better haircut though, Karen observes. And a better suit.

"Hi Matt."

"Hi Karen."

"Let's skip the small talk," she says as soon as he unbuttons his suit jacket and settles into his seat, "Who is this mysterious client of yours?"

"Good to see you too, Karen," he says with a bemused grin. He pads around his briefcase, finds a manila envelope, and slides it across the table to her. "I can't tell you who our client is because, well, that's what we need you to find out."

Intrigued, Karen pours the contents of the envelope, a thick pad of papers fastened by a rubber band, into her lap.

"Name's John Doe. No address, no social, no prints, nothing." Matt offers as she flips through the file: medical records, x-rays, test results, insurance bills, a terse police report about a shooting two years prior. "He doesn't come up in any police or federal database. This man is a ghost."

"Well, have you tried asking the ghost who he is?" Karen says with a sardonic chuckle. "This the only photograph?" She holds up a picture of John Doe from the file.

"Yeah," Matt nods, "Foggy took that yesterday with his phone."

She sets the file down on the table with a sigh. "Matt, this case is no leads and all dead ends," she practically swallows her cup of coffee, "What do I get out of helping your John Doe?"

"This guy, he doesn't remember anything from before he woke up. Metro General is going to discharge him this afternoon and he doesn't have anywhere to go."

Another internal groan: _a fucking homeless amnesiac charity case from her ex, just what Karen Page needs with her next month's rent almost due_.

"I'm not a fucking hotel, Matt," Karen strains to keep her temper in check, "Or a charity! And I'm sure John Doe would just _love_ living in my rat-infested closet in Hell's Kitchen."

"Please, Karen, just-just look into his case for a couple of days. He'll be there a couple of days. That's all I'm asking."

"Why can't he stay with you or Foggy? Or even in your office? You're really going to make the single, defenseless, twenty-something girl live with some – Wait," she stops mid-sentence and sits up suddenly, "Why would a _ghost_ need defense attorneys?"

Matt leans back in the booth and takes a deep breath. The look on his face almost makes Karen regret asking the question. He opens and closes his mouth a few times. "John may or may not have hospitalized several Metro General staff members and one NYPD officer after coming out of his coma. I know it sounds bad. Karen, trust me, I know it sounds really bad. But Foggy and I think we've actually got a decent case. We just need some more information and some more time. Please, Karen."

Propping her head up with one hand, Karen watches traffic roll past the diner down 11th Avenue. The rational part of Karen Page says she should walk away. It says that "Tangerine is the new black" is probably the lesser of two evils as far as Lifestyle headlines are concerned. It says she should walk away – far, far, away from whatever mess Nelson & Murdock is in with this John Doe situation.

Yet, the less-than-rational part of Karen Page is shouting from the rooftops that she needs to find out more – much, much more about John Doe. His picture screams military, maybe the marines or special forces, and then there's this sadness in his eyes that looks as if it could never be undone. It takes her less than a heartbeat to admit she is already hooked.

"Fine," she stuffs the various documents back into the manila envelope, "just for a couple of days."

Later, Karen Page would look back on this fateful conversation with Matt Murdock and just sigh deeply. She had really thought it would only be a couple of days.


	3. Chapter 3

John Doe is tall and he practically takes up the entirety of Karen Page's apartment. She swears her single-room apartment has never looked as small as it does with John Doe inside it.

Last night, John had been wearing Foggy's baggy clothes and sleeping on a coach in the office of Nelson & Murdock, an office with no view and definitely no fancy bathroom. This morning, however, John had switched to a black jacket and gray shirt with black jeans. Karen gets the distinction impression that John's fashion choices would drive whoever penned the "Fifty shades of kumquat" headline in the Lifestyle department up a wall.

"Ah, yeah, just uh, make yourself at home. The IKEA couch is all yours." Karen gestures towards a beige couch in the corner, "It's not much of a bed, but..."

"It'll do," His voice is a sonorous rumble, so deep and low that Karen fears her apartment might collapse under its weight if he were to speak any louder. "Thank you, ma'am."

The presence of another human being makes Karen feel foreign and strange in her own apartment. Of course, she has brought men home before since she started working at the Bulletin. Once or twice. Maybe just once. But still, John Doe's lumbering form, limbs spilling out over the sides of the cheapest (and smallest) IKEA couch she could drag home on her own from Red Hook, nags at her. _Everything about this situation is so fucking…off._

"I'll call for some take out. Chinese?" As she turns towards her sliver of a kitchen, she realizes she had never taken off her trench coat, the strap of which snags tightly against her front doorknob, threatening to pull her down, along with a precariously placed table and lamp next to her.

Before she even gets a chance to shout, his hand finds the back of her waist and his other effortlessly tips the table and lamp back into place. He steps away the moment Karen is back on even footing but his face had been just close enough to hers that she felt blood rushing to her cheeks.

"Chinese," he answers.

Karen dials the takeout place's number absentmindedly, too busy trying to mentally count the paces between her couch and her front door. Sixteen. Seventeen. _Ex-military, or maybe her apartment was just that small._ Twenty two.

"Number One Chinese, may I take your order?" Twenty four. Twenty five. Twenty Si– "Hello?"

"Oh, sorry. Can I get delivery please?"

When the food arrives, they eat on the floor because Karen has only one chair and nothing that even comes close to a dining table. She hesitates, watching him crack open a plastic container of chicken and broccoli. He had probably done something similar a thousand times before with his friends, his girlfriend, or maybe his wife.

"So – "

His head jerks up at the sound of her voice, body taut and eyes alert for a split second before his features soften and he seems to remember who Karen is and where he is. _Definitely ex-military._

"Do you mind if I asked you some questions while we eat?"

"No ma'am. I know you probably want me gone."

"I didn't mean it that way. I just, uh, have an early day at the Bulletin tomorrow."

She splays out John's files on the floor between their takeout cartons and sits back against the foot of her bed with a notepad in hand. "Okay," she starts, "tell me what you remember."

Carousel. Carnage. Crosses.

These are the only three things he can bring to mind after hours of sitting on her bedroom floor. Karen can't tell if they're filling in a mad lib or doing alliterations.

"Smoke," he says after a long while, "Everything is behind this goddamn smoke and I just can't see."

After that, she decides to call it a night. Tomorrow she'll run his description through missing persons. Maybe, she prays, the databases will turn up a match (or something close enough) so she can send this John Doe on his way. Collapsing into her sheets, she curses her own curiosity: who knew amnesia would be this difficult to deal with.


	4. Chapter 4

Karen Page's physical body stirs expectantly to aroma of coffee long before the smell drives her consciousness back into the world of the living. And, in the world of the living, Karen finds John Doe, the hulking (possibly ex-military) amnesiac, in her kitchen, brewing coffee and making bacon and eggs. It is mornings like these that make Karen Page question her own sanity.

"Hope you like breakfast." He sounds almost _shy_.

"God, yes," she says through a yawn, the smell of bacon grease and coffee drawing her into the kitchen, "I can't even remember the last time I had breakfast at home." She takes a sip of coffee from one of the two mugs on the counter. Had the coffee not been so goddamn good, Karen Page would have been embarrassed beyond words by the involuntary sound that came out of her mouth in that moment. To make matters worse, the bacon and eggs were just as good.

"Jesus Christ. Forget it. We're done," she shakes her head and wags her fork at him, "We're opening a breakfast joint and a coffee shop and we're gonna make millions."

The dorkiest grin spreads across his face, like a kid who receives too much praise all of a sudden and doesn't know what to do. "Glad I can still do some things right."

Out of habit (his own habit?), he glances over at the clock on Karen's wall: 9:54. "Don't you, uh," he starts with a chuckle remembering last night's dinner, "have an early day at the Bulletin?"

Karen's eyes dart over to the same clock. "Fuck!" Her fork and plate clatter into the kitchen sink as Karen leaps the length of her apartment in a single bound, slamming the bathroom door behind her.

He watches her from the corner of his eyes as he does the dishes: Karen darting across her apartment tugging parts of a blouse and applying mascara, pulling at hems of her skirt and then combing her hair, stumbling back and forth while trying to put on heels and a coat at the same time. Finally, when she's halfway out the door, she turns in his direction and declares, "There's a spare key under the doormat if you need to come and go. Uh, we'll figure something out about dinner. I have to go. I am so sorry. So sorry!"

And just like that, Karen Page is gone.

Karen comes to regret her life decisions during the cab ride to work. She has missed a meeting with Ellison, a client meeting with the shrill and, indeed, wealthy cuckolded wife, and has left some _random fucking guy_ (who makes one hell of a cup of coffee) in her apartment, alone. _Fuck, get your shit together, Page._


End file.
